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Some restaurant amenities deserve their own billing. A martini cart rolling toward your table? That’s certainly one way to get our attention.
Humm, the new namesake restaurant from Eleven Madison Park chef Daniel Humm, opens Saturday, October 10, at 435 Hudson Street in the West Village. Taking over the former En Japanese Brasserie space between Leroy and Morton streets, it brings the celebrated chef downtown for a more casual, à la carte outing—with plenty of vegetables, a wood-fired oven and a roast chicken built for sharing.
Executive chef Dimitri Magi, who has worked alongside Humm for 16 years at Eleven Madison Park, is helping lead the kitchen. The idea is to serve the sort of food the pair enjoys cooking for themselves and friends, with fewer courses standing between you and dinner. “We want to show a different side of us,” Humm told Food & Wine.
That side includes crispy feta with sesame and shallot agrodolce, tuna crudo, chicory and tangerine salad and fried eggplant with pickled green tomatoes. Seasonal produce comes from partners including Magic Farms in Hoosick Falls, New York, which also supplies Eleven Madison Park.
But back to that chicken: an homage to Humm’s mother’s cooking, the bird for two comes from Amish farms in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Beneath its skin goes a mixture of bread crumbs, butter, lemon, thyme and garlic. It gets multiple rounds of roasting before a finish in the wood-fired oven, followed by chicken jus and brown butter. (Whole branzino provides another centerpiece, while red meat is absent from the menu.)
The roughly 5,000-square-foot restaurant also gives you plenty to look at between bites. Designer Pierre Yovanovitch’s interiors feature works by Louise Bourgeois, Rashid Johnson and Roni Horn, plus a ceiling mural and private dining room by Francesco Clemente, the artist whose name already graces Humm’s cocktail lounge, Clemente Bar.
An open kitchen surrounds the wood-fired oven in the main dining area, where that martini cart will make its rounds. There are three seating options: the dining room, with the full menu, and the bar and lounge, which offer smaller food menus. The wine list spans established regions and smaller producers.
Reservations are already available through Resy. Whether you’re after the chicken, the art or a cocktail that comes to you, this opening gives the West Village another table to chase.